It is our privilege to introduce The Art of Stewardship Project. Established by Nadine and Greg Mort, its mission is to encourage stewardship and environmental awareness through the arts. The Project offers a global forum for interaction and dialogue to develop support and opportunities for artists in their role as Stewards of our Earth.

The Art of Stewardship
The Arts have always had the ability to transcend language, culture, and the centuries. Since the dawn of our collective human memory, art in its myriad forms has expressed our hopes, our fears, and our loves while also serving as an interpretive record of the world around us. Then as now, the voice of Art remains a powerful communicative tool. In this, the new millennium, the realization that we indeed live on “One World” carries with it responsibilities never dreamt of by our distant ancestors as they expressed their visions on cave walls and with carved fertility icons. We now recognize the fragility of our planetary home and the profound role each of us plays in the drama of life on Earth. Now more than ever the “Artist” will play an ever-increasing part in a cast that must include… all of humanity.

The “Art of Stewardship” is in fact a calling out to those who speak the language that is universally understood. One that has the potential to raise awareness, inspire and celebrate our role as “Stewards” of our tiny oasis in space. At this point in history no challenge is more important or more immediate in nature. Our very survival depends on it. Knowing this, I call on artists worldwide to help bring the notion of “Stewardship” to the forefront of our conversations and consciousness.
- Greg Mort

Selections from the David H. Hickman Collection of Greg Mort paintings recently donated to the Academy Art Museum will be on display during the museum's 50th Anniversary exhibit. Celebrating 50 Years: Recent Gifts to the Academy Art Museum, September 13-November 1, 2008. For additional information visit: www.art-academy.org

Following the Artist Talk, Greg Mort will introduce
Purification: River Baptism and the Living River
a short documentary film premiering at The Prince Theatre. Encore
presentations of this documentary will be shown at the Prince Theatre on Friday,
October 3 at 7 pm and again on Saturday October 4 at 12 noon at no charge.